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THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 5, 2015
PROFILES
THE MAN WHO WOULDN'T SIT DOWN
How Univision's Jorge Ramos earns his viewers' trust.
BY WILLIAM FINNEGAN
When Jorge Ramos travels in Mid-
dle America, nobody recognizes
him---until somebody does. Ramos is
the evening-news co-anchor on Univi-
sion, the country's largest Spanish-
language TV network, a job he has
held since 1986. A few weeks ago, I was
on a flight with him from Chicago to
Dubuque. Ramos, who is fifty-seven, is
slim, not tall, with white hair and an un-
assuming demeanor. Wearing jeans,
a gray sports coat, and a blue open-
collared shirt, he went unremarked.
But then, as he disembarked, a fellow-
passenger, a stranger in her thirties, drew
him aside at the terminal gate, speaking
rapidly in Spanish. Ramos bowed his
head to listen.The woman was a teacher
at a local technical college. Things in
this part of Iowa were bad, she said. Peo-
ple were afraid to leave their houses.
When they went to Walmart, they only
felt comfortable going at night. Ramos
nodded. Her voice was urgent. She wiped
her eyes. He held her arm while she
composed herself. The woman thanked
him and rushed away.
"Did you hear that?" he asked, at the
car-rental counter. "They only go out
to Walmart at night."
In an Italian restaurant on a sleepy
corner in downtown Dubuque, a dish-
washer came out from the kitchen to-
ward the end of lunch to pay her re-
spects. She, too, fought back tears as she
thanked Ramos for his work. He asked
her how long she had been in Iowa. Five
years, she said. She was from Hidalgo,
not far from Mexico City, Ramos's home
town. She hurried back to the kitchen.
"We have almost no political rep-
resentation," Ramos said. He meant
Latinos in the United States. "Marco
Rubio and Ted Cruz won't defend the
undocumented."
"A Country for All," Ramos's most
recent book---he has published eleven---
is dedicated to "all undocumented im-
migrants." He was trying to explain
how a journalist finds himself in the
role of advocate.
"We're a young community," he said.
"You wouldn't expect ABC, or any of
the mainstream networks, to take a po-
sition on immigration, health care, any-
thing. But at Univision it's di erent. We
are pro-immigrant.That's our audience,
and people depend on us. When we are
better represented politically, that role
for us will recede."
Besides co-anchoring the nightly
news, and cranking out books, Ramos
hosts a Sunday-morning public-a airs
show, "Al Punto" ("To the Point"), and
writes a syndicated column; for the past
two years, he has also hosted a weekly
news-magazine show, "America with
Jorge Ramos," in English, on a fledgling
network (a joint venture of Univision
and ABC) called Fusion. (When Jon
Stewart asked him, on "The Daily Show,"
to account for his hyperactivity, Ramos
said, "I'm an immigrant. So I just need
to get a lot of jobs.") His English is fluent,
if strongly accented. His Spanish, par-
ticularly on-air, is carefully neutral---
pan-Latino, not noticeably Mexican.
Univision's audience comes from many
di erent countries, and the network
broadcasts from Miami, where the most
common form of Spanish is Cuban.
Ramos occupies a peculiar place in
the American news media. He has won
eight Emmys and an armload of jour-
nalism awards, covered every major story
since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and in-
terviewed every American President since
George H. W. Bush. (He's interviewed
Barack Obama half a dozen times.) But
his a liation can work against him. In
June, when he sent a handwritten letter
to Donald Trump, who had just launched
his Presidential campaign, requesting an
interview, it was no dice. Univision had
cut its business ties with Trump, includ-
ing its telecasts of the Miss U.S.A. and
Miss Universe beauty pageants, after
Trump accused Mexico of sending "rap-
ists" to the United States. Trump posted
Ramos's letter on Instagram, crowing that
Univision was "begging" him for inter-
views. The letter included Ramos's per-
sonal cell-phone number, which Ramos
was then obliged to change. In the weeks
that followed, Trump produced a stream
of provocative remarks and proposals
about Mexicans and immigration, giv-
ing the national immigration-policy de-
bate the hardest edge it has had in gen-
erations. Now Ramos really wanted to
interview him.
Trump was planning a rally on
Dubuque's riverfront that afternoon.
Ramos and Dax Tejera, a young Fusion
executive producer, met up with a local
cameraman in the parking lot of the
Grand River Center, where a press con-
ference was scheduled in advance of the
rally. They went inside early, past some
tables where Ann Coulter, who was
going to introduce Trump at the rally,
was setting up to sign copies of her lat-
est book, "¡Adios, America!: The Left's
Plan to Turn Our Country Into a Third
World Hellhole." Ramos, heading up-
stairs, said, "We had her on our show
when that book came out.Trump seems
to be getting his ideas from her."
In the room designated for the press
conference, Ramos and Tejera consid-
ered camera angles and lighting. They
staked out a pair of front-row seats.
Ramos was studying a sheaf of notes.
"Normally, I'd just have a ten-second
question prepared," he said. "But this is
not normal. Here I have to make a state-
ment, as an indignant immigrant. Tell
him that Latinos despise him. And then
I have to ask a question, as a journalist,
if he'll let me." The room was filling
with reporters. Ramos worried that
Trump would recognize him and not
call on him. "It will be important to
stand up," he said. "Trump's street-smart.
If you're sitting, he'll use it, the visual
power imbalance, and squash you." Te-
jera stationed the cameraman against a